Category Archives: Marketing

Though you may never have put a pen to paper, your nonprofit has a powerful, detail oriented story. The characters are donors, volunteers, clients, board members, staff members, and other bright faces in your community. The plot is sprinkled and layered with events, campaigns, and big projects completed. There’s action, conflict, and many terrific endings as you continue to write and rewrite the ongoing story of the impact you have in the lives of others. Crafting your nonprofit story to keep people interested and invested in your mission should be a top priority for your nonprofit.

To ensure you’re incorporating all the elements of a traditional story in your nonprofit story, begin by looking to your mission statement. Your mission has identified core ideals and aims that your nonprofit upholds in all programs and operations. With a mission statement driving focus, this keeps “characters” invested in your story. Your organization already takes on the mission as a daily reminder of the work you do. With the mission of your nonprofit as your story’s guiding light, supporters can thread your story into theirs and adopt your mission as a part of their own.

After utilizing your mission statement to get constituents invested, look next to your vision statement. This list of goals and outline of long term projects provide key areas for people to get interested in. Having a vision allows you to continually add to your organization’s list of accomplishments and triumphs over the years. Your nonprofit vision gives your story action and passion, the kind of ongoing plot points that keep your characters registering for events, involved as volunteers, and participating in programs that strengthen your community.

Donors, volunteers, clients, community members, staff, board members: This is who makes up your core audience. Within these key groups, you have many individuals that all seek, and even require, certain sets of information to stay invested in your organization. Understanding the “who” of your target market for direct mail, mass email campaigns, and social media posts will lead to increased interaction and stronger engagement.

Uphold your mission statement in everything you do. Your mission is your stronghold, the few sentences that sum up the ongoing key goals of your organization. Choose these sentences wisely. Use this mission statement as a starting point to understanding your audience, those who seek to take a more active role in it versus a passive one.

After paying attention to and placing importance on your mission statement, be aware of your brand. Your brand is a combination of the tone of your communication efforts mixed with the content of individual and mass communications. Just as your audience embraces a mission statement if it speaks their language, an audience has the power to promote and take on the brand you so earnestly believe in. Your nonprofit’s audience can take your brand and mission to new heights because of their belief in it.

Providing a strong mission and brand for your audience to back up gives your social media and mailings the traction they need to boost engagement amongst your existing followers. From here, followers of your followers can tap into your carefully chosen content as well. Knowing your audience has your back and that they see your words as full of meaning and purpose is invaluable. You don’t need to win over your audience online; just give them a reason to keep coming back for more.

To get started in better understanding your audience and tailoring content across your mission, brand, and social media, give us a call today!

Marianna Woodruff is Director of Brand Awareness at DonorLynk, LLC. DonorLynk aims to provide nonprofits with tailored solutions that work for you, not against you.

Last Friday, I was honored to be asked to lead a workshop session on social media for Habitat for Humanity affiliates of Tennessee. During our hour long session, we covered three main topics: social media scheduling, social media platforms worth using and advertising through, and empowering social ambassadors to actively share your mission.

Determining a schedule for your most important platforms is valuable because it creates a collaborative space for members of your team to share what content needs to be promoted at certain times and dates. Taking your schedule from Google Sheets to plugging it into HootSuite or PostCron then gives your team a simple way to have posts shared across the platforms with just one click. Scheduling is powerful because it frees up much needed time for your nonprofit team.

Making the most of the content you put out there means refining content based on the platform you are posting to. Facebook gives you a streamlined way to connect through groups or ads. Twitter provides a way to reach new audiences through hashtags. Snapchat is behind the scenes tool your followers crave. Instagram allows you to set expectations through photo series and swift interactions with loyal followers. Whatever the platform, adapt your message to be easily accessible to those engaging with it.

Allowing social ambassadors to share your mission with new audiences provides a whole new way to connect with untapped potential. Social ambassadors embrace your vision for improvement by using their own social profiles to appeal and engage their individual networks on your behalf. Identify these ambassadors by their reach or status, inspire them to share valuable content, and watch them use their influence to attract new support.

If you have been pushing the task of organizing your social media strategy to the bottom of your priority list, it’s time we cross this off your list together! Connect with us today!

Marianna Woodruff is Director of Brand Awareness at DonorLynk, LLC. DonorLynk aims to provide nonprofits with tailored solutions that work for you, not against you.

Whether you have 5 followers or 5,000 followers on social media, we want your nonprofit to understand how to put them to good use. Your followers enter into a modern online contract when they click follow, a contract that states they are agreeing to support your organization and be open to opportunities with it moving forward. What else does this subtle, digital contract include? Your followers knowingly agree to review content whenever they login to Twitter or Facebook. These online supporters absorb your stories, testimonies, photos, videos, and invitations. From there, they each make a choice to interact with opportunities you provide to participate, or not. Because of their choice, they’re already halfway there to being a social ambassador of your nonprofit.

Half of being a social ambassador is simply interacting with content regularly, but the other half is actively sharing that content with each individual’s own social network. These social ambassadors can be specifically appointed by your team to share pertinent posts with their large audience. OR, you can regularly provoke ALL followers to share content. Some will take on this role as an honorable one, a way to do their part aside from giving, volunteering, or attending events. Surely, you want them to eventually hold these roles as well, but the more people they reach with your quality content, the more people understand the impact you have and are educated on how to be a part of.

Beginning with your followers on Twitter or Facebook is how you begin building your social ambassador base. Soon, you’ll be able to interact exclusively with those that regularly share posts. From there, you can draft exclusive content for them to promote to their networks. Need help in creating this social ambassador program at your nonprofit? Give me a call at 615-624-4176 to get the conversation started.

Marianna Woodruff is Director of Brand Awareness at DonorLynk, LLC. DonorLynk aims to provide nonprofits with tailored solutions that work for you, not against you.

The number so blatantly tallying your loyal followers continues to rise, but you find yourself stressed as to how you’ll keep them enthralled and away from the dreaded unfollow button. DonorLynk has determined a few key components of all start posts as you work hard engaging your followers as they grow in number.

Your organization’s various calls to action should have a regular presence on your social media profiles. No followers should be taken aback when you encourage them give to your nonprofit or sign up to volunteer. Those invitations are all a part of the greatness you accomplish as a part of the mission you have taken on.

Seek feedback routinely through social media. Use these platforms to survey this broad audience on what you are great at doing, and what you could do better. No, you aren’t needy in doing this, but more so sending the message that your nonprofit strives to be a resource to both clients and its donors and volunteers at all times.

Always remember and understand who you’re talking to when you post on social media. Take a look at the interests, ages, locations of your followers so that you can play to your audience appropriately. Be the tweet or picture that stops their scrolling finger for a few moments of time and calls them to engage further. Only simple trial and error will reveal the best content your specific followers crave.

Ready to reveal to your followers all your best cards? Let us help! Contact us at 615-988-4600 or through this contact page.

Marianna Woodruff is Director of Brand Awareness at DonorLynk, LLC. DonorLynk aims to provide nonprofits with tailored solutions that work for you, not against you.